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The gates of Aviandar haven’t opened in fifty years. Not since the Dragon Lord’s mate died, and he locked himself away in his atmospheric castle, high in the skies.
But when the mightiest wings fold, the smallest wings may soar.
This slow-burn, paranormal shifter romance is an adventure-driven story, where the characters’ emerging desires come into direct conflict with their personal goals. It is set on Earth, in a completely new shifter world, NOT the Harmony Ends universe. The tone and themes can be dark, with lighthearted moments along the way.
Series option expected.
Top tropes: fated mates, rejected mates, power play
Sample Scene:
I didn’t know how I’d mustered up the courage to brave the magical thunderclouds and lightning encasing the castle, but I couldn’t fathom how I was supposed to make myself take the next steps up the stairs and through the castle gates.
I couldn’t budge. Fear had seized my nervous system the moment I caught their scents lingering in the trapped air swirling around the castle.
All the missing shifters I’d been sent to track down—harpies, sirens, ruhks, lamassus, and thunderbirds—had made it to this same doorstep.
Not a single scent of a common bird, like me, but that was to be expected of those chosen to be the Dragon Lord’s new mate: they were the best of our best.
Had been the best of our best. No Avian had seen or heard from a single mate candidate once in all ten years that we’d been sending them to the castle in the hopes of drawing the Dragon Lord out of his mourning.
Which is why I was now stuck standing paralyzed in front of the castle’s massive doors smelling the scents of shifters presumed dead.
I hoped they weren’t dead. Their scents didn’t smell fetid with decay, so I could probably assume they weren’t dead. Or hadn’t been by the time they’d reached the gates.
I gulped. I shouldn’t have been scared. There was no need to be so scared. Smelling them was a good thing. Should have been a good thing.
“Who dares intrude on my solitude?”
A voice deep as a drum and louder than thunder burst through my ears and rocked through my chest. My knees crumpled under me, and I collapsed down to huddle on the cloud.
“H-h…” My mouth was so dry. My voice so weak. “H-hail to the D-dra—”
“Intruder!”
The wrath behind that voice sent shivers crawling down my spine.
“H-hail t-o the Dragon L-lord!” I stammered.
“Insolent fool—just like the rest!”
Instinct whipped my head up—I couldn’t explain why. There were few perks to growing up as the smallest raptor in a wing of other birds bigger and bolder than me, born to a world of other Avians better and brighter than me, but one of them was I was faster than all of them. And I’d learned early on how to use the skills only I had not just to survive, but to shine.
I hadn’t been able to move an inch when I’d tried to push my human feet toward the forbidding castle, but it took no time or thought for my arms to snap out as my wings, to take off with the unpredictable gusts, and to swoop away from the fireball that rained down on Aviandar’s cloudyard.
As I lifted into the sky once more, I caught the giant shadow looming through the clouds overhead, far above the turmoil blocking the castle off from the clouds below.
A booming laugh that crackled like sinister lightning carried over all other sounds.
“A fool you may be, little bird, but worthy prey I’ve not chased for years. Fly, little bird. Fly as fast as you can.”
More World Building: Three dragon shifters who are as old and endless as time itself rule the Earth. They are known as the Dragon Lords. Each Dragon Lord governs their own shifter people and realm: Aviandi, in the skies; Terrasus, on the lands; and Marram, in the oceans.
Earth’s geography, biology, and evolutionary timeline are generally the same, but the common human history of Earth is drastically different. For example, inter-realm conflict is never about land conquest, as each group of shifters is adapted to survive in completely different habitats. Resource acquisition, foreign interference, and big dragon egos are usually the reasons behind outright violence between the realms.